Thursday, 22 December 2016

The current post follows on from a previous discussion of the potential Phoenician/Punic roots of the island-name Thanet and the linguistic, historical and archaeological context and support for such a suggestion. Needless to say, the aim of what follows is not to revisit in detail the arguments made in that post, nor the additional archaeological, isotopic and numismatic evidence for contact between North Africa/the Mediterranean and pre-Roman Britain discussed in three subsequent posts. Instead, the aim here is simply to offer, for the sake of interest, a map and list of the British and Irish place-names that are currently thought by a number of linguists to be of potentially Phoenician/Punic origin, along with a few brief observations on these and their distribution.

British and Irish place-names considered to be of potentially Phoenician/Punic origin (image: C. R. Green).

The names listed below include some of the most obscure and difficult toponyms surviving from Britain, many of which have no satisfactory explanation aside from a potential Phoenician/Punic origin, as both Richard Coates and George Broderick have recently emphasised in their important discussions of this evidence.(1) The Phoenician language and its later, divergent form Punic are extinct Semitic languages that originated in the Near East and were spoken in antiquity across into North Africa and southern Iberia by Phoenician and Carthaginian traders and colonists. Needless to say, an origin for a number of British and Irish names in these languages is an intriguing possibility, and such a linguistic hypothesis does, in fact, have a potential historical context too. A degree of direct contact between the ancient Punic world and pre-Roman Britain has, after all, often been argued for since the sixteenth century on the basis of a small number of Classical sources that seem to point in this direction, and in recent years this notion has gained a degree of additional support from a variety of numismatic, isotopic, and archaeological evidence, as has been discussed in previous posts.(2)

With regard to the names themselves, several points can be made by way of a brief introduction. First and foremost, it is worth observing that they are all either coastal or island names, something that obviously accords well with the idea of them having Phoenician/Punic origins, given that any contacts between pre-Roman Britain and the Punic world of southern Iberia and North Africa are likely to have been primarily maritime in nature. Likewise, the suggested Proto-Semitic/Punic roots identified by Coates and others as potentially underlying these British and Irish coastal/island names are—importantly—plausible in terms of their lexical content too, referring to islands, the coast, cliffs/rocks, plants and animals, relative positions and/or compass points, culturally significant metals, and divine words or names.(3) In other words, the basic characteristics of the group as a whole, in terms of not only their general difficulty within the overall corpus of British names, but also their shared geographic characteristics and the range of meanings that they would possess, is credible and might inspire a degree of confidence.

Second, looking more closely at their geographic distribution, the names seem to fall naturally into two major groups. The first group is located in southern Britain from the Scilly Isles/Cornwall in the west across to the Isle of Thanet, Kent, in the east. Needless to say, such a southern group of Phoenician/Punic names in Britain would obviously accord well with the often-noted textual hints of Punic traders visiting pre-Roman southern Britain, primarily to obtain tin, a rare metal that was certainly exported to the Continent and Mediterranean from the Bronze Age onwards.(4) Indeed, in this context it is interesting to observe that several of these potential Punic names are, in fact, located at or close-by sites with links to the ancient tin trade and/or with evidence for significant pre-Roman Mediterranean contacts, as is discussed in more detail in the list below. The second group is located in the west, from Ireland up to the Outer Hebrides in the far north-west. The significance of this concentration of potential Punic island and coastal names is open to debate, although the well-known archaeological evidence for copper mining in Bronze Age Ireland is certainly worth noting (see further below), as is the find of a North African Barbary ape skull from a probable third- to second-century BC context at Navan Fort, Northern Ireland. The fragmentary surviving records of the later fourth-century BC voyage of Pytheas of Massalia may also be relevant here too, given that they indicate the presence of at least some Continental traders along the west coast of Britain up to the area of the Hebrides and beyond by the fourth century BC.(5)

A trapezoidal lead core from a Mediterranean Type IIa wooden anchor of the fifth to second century BC that was found in Plymouth Sound, close to Rame Head, one of the potentially Punic names listed below; note, other finds of such early anchor stocks in Atlantic waters are usually thought to be of Phoenician or Punico-Mauretanian origin, see fn. 12 (image: ProMare, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).

Third and finally, it is interesting to note that a Punic origin has also been tentatively suggested for three major island names in the region as well as a number of more minor island and coastal names, the names in question being Britain, Ireland and Thule. Needless to say, these suggestions are perhaps the most contentious of all those outlined below, not least because Britain and Ireland already have frequently cited Celtic etymologies, in a notable contrast to the more local or regional names covered here, with Britain usually believed to derive from a word meaning 'the people of the forms' or 'the tattooed people', whilst Ireland (Éire) is often considered to mean 'the fat, or fertile, country'. However, Broderick in particular has pointed out that these etymologies are not wholly certain nor universally agreed upon, and neither are they totally without linguistic issues; moreover, it might be wondered how plausible some of the proposed meanings are as specific people-/country-names too (the use of tattooing and body art was not, for example, confined or specific to the Britons, but seems rather to have been fairly widespread in Iron Age Europe). In this light, it is intriguing to observe that Phoenician/Punic etymologies are also available for both of these major island-names, giving the ‘tin land’ (pretan, ‘tin’) for Britain (*Pritan-) and the ‘copper island’ (*’i: weriju:, ‘island of copper’) for Éire/Ireland (*Īweryon), and that Richard Coates has argued that these suggestions cannot be casually dismissed, especially in light of the likely presence of other Proto-Semitic/Punic island- and coastal-names in the British Isles. Indeed, the fact that the suggested Phoenician/Punic roots of these two names would actually complement each other remarkably well and are, moreover, semantically credible—making reference to key material resources that were certainly available and exported from these islands in the pre-Roman period—would seem to be at least notable.(6) In this context, it is also worth observing that it has been recently independently argued from the available archaeological evidence that there existed a 'maritime' Atlantic network carrying metalwork and metal north from the Mediterranean/Iberia to Sweden via Britain in the Bronze Age and that, as part of this, 'ports in the British Isles acted as transit centres for copper from other parts of Europe as well as providing local tin ore', something that would obviously offer a potentially significant degree of support to the above idea of Britain being originally known as the 'tin land'.(7)

In sum, the evidence relating to these names is undoubtedly intriguing and the case for at least a proportion of these names being genuinely Proto-Semitic/Phoenician/Punic in origin would appear to be worthy of at least some serious consideration. Obviously the suggested Punic etymologies for these island and coastal names are open to debate and potential alternative explanations might be advanced for them, with a greater or lesser degree of plausibility. However, what matters is perhaps not any individual name, but rather their collective weight and the fact that a Proto-Semitic/Punic origin both appears to be at least possible and appropriate for a small but significant number of otherwise often very difficult British coastal names.

The list that follows contains all of the British and Irish names included on the map above, these having been identified as possibly or probably of Phoenician/Punic origin by Richard Coates, George Broderick and others.(8)

The Isle of Thanet, Kent — Tanatus, Tanatos, Tenet, Tanet, originally probably *Tanitā or similar. A difficult name with no credible etymology in insular languages and often considered inexplicable. However, it is readily explicable as a Phoenician/Punic island-name 'Y TNT, meaning the 'Isle (of) Tanit', the chief goddess of the ancient Phoenician mercantile power of Carthage, a name also seemingly applied to the island on which the Phoenician Atlantic colony of Cádiz was built (said by Pliny, Natural History, IV.36, to have been called by the natives the 'Isle of Juno', i.e. the 'Isle of Tanit', given that the Roman goddess Juno corresponded to the Phoenician Tanit under the interpretatio Romana). It has been argued that name could well have been transferred/applied to a secondary trading colony established in Britain from Cádiz in a similar geographic location to the original and as a result of Phoenician mercantile, colonial activities in the Atlantic, especially in light of the really quite exceptional concentration of Carthaginian coins in eastern Kent. See further the in-depth discussion of this name in a previous post.(9) In terms of the motivation for this name, it is worth emphasising that the Isle of Thanet in Kent has recently been independently identified as a potential key strategic 'Late Bronze Age trading centre' lying at a mid-point on a trade route between Scandinavia and the Mediterranean, acting as a 'transit centre' for metalwork from other parts of Europe as well as 'providing local tin ore' to these traders, a scenario strongly supported by both the presence of multiple people who grew up in North Africa and in Scandinavia within a ninth- to third-century BC cemetery discovered at Cliffs End, Thanet, and the recent isotopic analysis of a pure tin ring-ingot from c. 950–700 BC found at Vårdinge, Sweden, which revealed that the tin in question did indeed come from Cornwall.(10)

Rame Head, Cornwall — Rame in 1086 and thereafter. No credible etymology in insular languages; 'completely obscure' and 'unexplained'. However, would make good sense as a derivative of the Semitic height-word *rām, compare Ramat Gan, Israel, and Ramallah, Palestine (Proto-Semitic root *rwm), especially as it is the name of a conspicuous conical headland guarding the western entrance to Plymouth Sound.(11) Interestingly, not only is Rame Head located in Cornwall, an ancient tin-producing region, but a major excavated Late Bronze Age and Iron Age trading site, Mount Batten, lies within Plymouth Sound itself, just to the north-east of Rame. Barry Cunliffe has argued that this trading site can be plausibly identified as the pre-Roman British tin-trading centre of Ictis, mentioned in the fourth century BC by Pytheas of Massalia (via Diodoros), and it is especially intriguing in this context to note that Plymouth Sound itself has actually produced a potentially Punic trapezoidal lead core from a Mediterranean Type IIa wooden anchor of the fifth to mid-second century BC too.(12)

Sark — Sargia, Serc, Serk. No known etymology in insular/European languages. The only credible explanation is an origin in the Proto-Semitic root *śrq, ‘redden; rise (as of the sun); east’, compare Modern Arabic šarq, ‘east’, which would give good sense as Sark is the easternmost and outermost island of the Guernsey group.(13)

Echri (Flat Holm, Severn Estuary) — The Welsh name for this island in the Severn Estuary, Echri, is apparently unexplained via insular languages, but a solution is possible if it is an island-name involving Proto-Semitic *’ħr, ‘behind, back’, meaning the 'rearmost island' or similar, which would be topographically appropriate given that Flat Holm is the last usable island encountered as one journeys up the Severn Estuary from the sea.(14)

Isles of Scilly — Early spellings include Sylinancim, Sully and Sullia. No good etymology in insular languages, with those that have been proposed having significant issues. The island-name could, however, plausibly reflect a Proto-Semitic root *s-l-, meaning 'rock, cliff', as found in Hebrew sela' (note, the -c- in the modern name is a post-medieval innovation). Alternatively, Richard Coates also compares the Punic site Zilis, modern Asilah, Morocco, which has been interpreted as meaning 'fishery'. Interestingly, the Atlantic Kassiterides, or 'Tin Islands', mentioned by Strabo and others have often been credibly identified with either the Isles of Scilly or Cornwall, with Strabo stating that 'in former times it was the Phoenicians alone', from their southern Iberian colony of Gades (Cádiz), 'who carried on this commerce'.(15)

The Solent — Soluente in 737 and 890. Only debatable etymologies in insular languages, although an Indo-European root is possible. However, the Proto-Semitic root *s-l- (cf. Hebrew sela) meaning 'rock, cliff' would also potentially work, as Vennemann and Coates note, giving a topographically not-implausible meaning of ‘place of cliffs’ or, more likely, ‘the prominent cliffs’.(16)

Uist — Scottish Gaelic Uibhist. No etymology in insular languages. The most credible solution, according to Richard Coates, is that it is identical in origin to the Mediterranean name Ibiza (Catalan Eivissa, Ebusos/'Ebousos in Pliny and Diodorus Siculus), a Phoenician island-name possibly meaning 'island of some fragrant plant, e.g. balsam or pine', implying lush vegetation, with a final /t/ gained under influence from Old Norse. The name may have been directly coined as a Phoenican/Punic island-name meaning ‘the ?lush island’ or it may be the result of transference, with the island-name Uist consciously coined after Ibiza; compare the situation suggested for Thanet and the ‘island of Juno/Tanit’ on which the Phoenician colony of Cádiz was originally sited, above. The name is either Phoenician/Punic in origin, as outlined here, or inexplicable.(17)

Iona — Ioua, Old Irish Í. No good etymology in insular languages. The easiest and most credible solution is that the name simply represents the Punic/Phoenician for 'island, isolated place', 'y or iw. Both Coates and Broderick suggest that such a simplex name could have carried the sense of Iona as an ‘island of a special sort, a holy place’, something that perhaps underlies the island’s later religious significance. Broderick notes that the island-name Iona is either a Phoenician/Punic name meaning ‘the island (possibly of some special/religious significance)’, or it is impossible to satisfactorily explain. (18)

Islay — Gaelic Eilean Ìleach, earlier Ile/Ila/Ilea insula. Coates notes that there are only problematic etymologies for this island-name in insular languages and suggests instead that the most credible solution is to see the name as resulting from the Punic/Phoenician generic for island, 'y, in initial position + a form of root of the divine name seen in Phoenician 'l (cf. Hebrew ’Eloah, Biblical Aramaic ’Ĕlāhā and Arabic Aḷḷāh, < Proto-Semitic *al-’ilāh, 'the god, God'), passed through Gaelic: so 'island of the god' or similar (compare Thanet, above, probably originally 'Y TNT, ‘the island of the goddess Tanit’).(19)

Southern Inner Hebrides (Islay, Colonsay, Jura) — Ebudae, Eboudai in Pliny and other classical sources. There is no etymology for this name available in insular or Western European languages; however, the name can be potentially explained as a Punic/Phoenician name meaning 'the sheep/lamb islands’. ‘Hebrides’ is either this Phoenician name or is impossible to satisfactorily explain.(20)

Rum — Ruimm in the Annals of Ulster (677). Once again, it is argued that there is no satisfactory explanation for this island-name in an insular languages. As with Rame Head and Ram Head, an origin in a Semitic height-word would give good sense, given its mountainous topography from all approaches and possession of the second highest mountain in the Western Isles; Broderick suggests Semitic *rūm, ‘be high’, would regularly give the name as recorded, with a later shortening of the vowel in the southern Hebrides. Otherwise, the name is inexplicable.(21)

Bute — Botis in the Ravenna Cosmography. The name is root-identical with Proto-Celtic *butā, British *bot-, ‘dwelling’; however, Richard Coates considers the word *butā/*bot- to be, in fact, a direct borrowing from Proto-Semitic *but-, ‘hut’, and therefore suggests that this island-name could well be itself another surviving Proto-Semitic island-name in the Hebrides, meaning ‘dwelling island’ or similar, given the others discussed here.(22)

Seil — Gaelic Saoil, earlier Sóil. Richard Coates compares Arabic sāħil, 'coast' from the Proto-Semitic root *šħl, considering the final form of the island-name to reflect this root under Gaelic influence. It is worth noting that a name derived from a Punic/Phoenician root meaning 'coast island' would be topographically appropriate here, as Seil/Saoil is separated from the mainland by a thin ocean channel spanned by the eighteenth-century Clachan Bridge.(23)

Britain & Éire/Ireland — Britannia/Prydain/*Pritan- and Ivernia/Hibernia/*Īweryon. Celtic etymologies for both of these major island-names are often cited, although these are not certain (see further above). Broderick, Coates and Vennemann all argue that plausible Proto-Semitic roots for both names are also available, however, and would moreover offer good sense when taken as a pair, with Britain being the ‘tin land’ (pretan, ‘tin’) and Éire/Ireland the ‘copper island’ (*’i: weriju:, ‘island of copper’) on this basis. Needless to say, tin and copper together make bronze, and archaeological, literary and isotopic evidence all combine to suggest that not only was long-distance trading taking place in the Late Bronze Age between Britain, the Mediterranean and Scandinavia, but also that these metals were likely one of the key drivers of this trade.(24)

Thule — An appropriate and credible Proto-Semitic etymology is available for this very difficult and often unexplained name in the root *ṯl, ‘become dark, shaded’, which would obviously work well for an island said to have been located in the far north where the ‘Arctic peculiarity’ of the Midnight Sun took hold, a phenomenon known to Pliny and other ancient authors.(25)

The Bronze Age 'Nebra sky disk' of c. 1600 BC; found near Nebra, Germany, & made using Cornish tin and gold (image: Wikimedia Commons).

Notes

1. R. Coates, 'A glimpse through a dirty window into an unlit house: names of some north-west European islands', in W. Ahrens et al (edd.), Names in Multi-Lingual, Multi-Cultural and Multi-Ethnic Contact: Proceedings of the 23rd International Congress of Onomastic Sciences, August 17-22, 2008 (Toronto, 2009), pp. 228–42 at pp. 234–5; R. Coates, ‘A toponomastic contribution to the linguistic prehistory of the British Isles’, Nomina 35 (2012), 49‒102; G. Broderick, 'Some island names in the former "Kingdom of the Isles": a reappraisal', Journal of Scottish Name Studies, 7 (2013), 1–28; and G. Broderick, ‘The names of Britain and Ireland revisited’, Beiträge zur Namenforschung, 44 (2009), 151‒7. See further C. R. Green, 'Thanet, Tanit and the Phoenicians: place-names, archaeology and pre-Roman trading settlements in eastern Kent?', 21 April 2015, blog post, online at http://www.caitlingreen.org/2015/04/thanet-tanit-and-the-phoenicians.html; T. Vennemann, 'The name of the Isle of Thanet', in A. J. Johnstone et al (edd.), Language and Text: Current Perspectives on English and Germanic Historical Linguistics and Philology (Heidelberg, 2006), pp. 345–74; and T. Vennemann, ‘Remarks on some British place-names’, in G. F. Carr et al (edd.), Interdigitations: Essays for Irmengard Rauch (New York, 1999), pp. 25‒62.2. See Avienus, Ora Maritima, LI.108-119; Strabo, Geography, 3.5.11; and especially D. W. Roller, Through the Pillars of Herakles: Greco-Roman Exploration of the Atlantic (London, 2006), pp. 12–14, 27–9. See also D. W. Roller, 'Himilco the Navigator', in E. K. Akyeampong & H. L. Gates Jnr. (edd.), Dictionary of African Biography, 6 vols. (Oxford, 2012), III.70; T. Vennemann, 'The name of the Isle of Thanet', in A. J. Johnstone et al (edd.), Language and Text: Current Perspectives on English and Germanic Historical Linguistics and Philology (Heidelberg, 2006), p. 356 and fn. 40; G. Broderick, ‘The names of Britain and Ireland revisited’, Beiträge zur Namenforschung, 44 (2009), 151‒7; and C. R. Green, 'Thanet, Tanit and the Phoenicians: place-names, archaeology and pre-Roman trading settlements in eastern Kent?', 21 April 2015, blog post, online at http://www.caitlingreen.org/2015/04/thanet-tanit-and-the-phoenicians.html.3. Coates, ‘A toponomastic contribution to the linguistic prehistory of the British Isles’, passim.4. Strabo, Geography, 3.5.11; D. W. Roller, Through the Pillars of Herakles: Greco-Roman Exploration of the Atlantic (London, 2006), pp. 12–14; T. Vennemann, 'The name of the Isle of Thanet', in A. J. Johnstone et al (edd.), Language and Text: Current Perspectives on English and Germanic Historical Linguistics and Philology (Heidelberg, 2006), p. 356 and fn. 40; G. Broderick, ‘The names of Britain and Ireland revisited’, Beiträge zur Namenforschung, 44 (2009), 151‒7. On the export of British tin to the Continent and Mediterranean from the Bronze Age through to the medieval era, see for example J. Ling et al, 'Moving metals II: provenancing Scandinavian Bronze Age artefacts by lead isotope and elemental analyses', Journal of Archaeological Science, 41 (2014), 106–32; M. Hausten et al, 'Tin isotopy – a new method for solving old questions', Archaeometry 52.5 (2010), 816–32; B. Cunliffe, The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek: The Man Who Discovered Britain, rev. edn (London, 2002); and B. Cunliffe, Britain Begins (Oxford, 2013), pp. 319–21. The continuance of this trade into the medieval period is confirmed by a number of sources, including (a) the seventh-century Byzantine Life of St John the Almsgiver, which tells of a ship from Alexandria that visited Britain around AD 610–620 and exchanged a cargo of corn for one of tin, and (b) the thirteenth-century Arabic account of Sa'id al-Maghribi, preserved in the early fourteenth-century Geography of Abu'l-Fida, who mentions the export of 'tin and copper... from the island of England and island of Ireland' to Alexandria, Egypt: Leontius, Life of St John the Almsgiver, chapter 10; C. A. Snyder, An Age of Tyrants: Britain and the Britons, AD 400–600 (Stroud, 1998), p. 152; C. J. Salter, 'Early tin extraction in the south-west of England: a resource for Mediterranean metalworkers of late antiquity', in M. M. Mango (ed.), Byzantine Trade, 4th–12th Centuries: The Archaeology of Local, Regional and International Exchange (Farnham, 2009), pp. 315–22 at p. 320; and D. N. Dunlop, 'The British Isles according to medieval Arabic authors', Islamic Quarterly, 4 (1957), 11–28 at p. 25. Note, although tin is only found in the south-west of Britain, the spread of names all along the south-coast through to Kent does not conflict with the idea of some connection between them and the tin trade. For example, the Isle of Thanet in Kent has recently been identified as a key strategic 'Late Bronze Age trading centre' lying at a mid-point on a trade route between Scandinavia and the Mediterranean and acting as a 'transit centre' for metalwork from other parts of Europe as well as 'providing local tin ore' to these traders (Ling et al, 'Moving metals II', p. 126. See also J. Ling & C. Uhnér, 'Rock art and metal trade', Adoranten, 21 (2014), 23–43, and T. Earle et al, 'The political economy and metal trade in Bronze Age Europe: understanding regional variability in terms of comparative advantages and articulations', European Journal of Archaeology, 18.4 (2015), 633–57, esp. pp. 642–4).5. On the Barbary ape from Navan Fort, Northern Ireland, see, for example, I. Armit, Headhunting and the Body in Iron Age Europe (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 72–3, and K. A. Costa, 'Marketing archaeological heritage sites in Ireland', in Y. M. Rowan and U. Baram (eds.), Marketing Heritage: Archaeology and the Consumption of the Past (Walnut Creek, 2004), pp. 69–92 at p. 73. On Pytheas of Massalia, see especially B. Cunliffe, The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek: The Man Who Discovered Britain, rev. edn (London, 2002) and B. Cunliffe, Britain Begins (Oxford, 2013), pp. 319–21.6. See especially on the etymology of Britain, Ireland and Thule G. Broderick, ‘The names of Britain and Ireland revisited’, Beiträge zur Namenforschung, 44 (2009), 151‒7 and R. Coates, ‘A toponomastic contribution to the linguistic prehistory of the British Isles’, Nomina 35 (2012), 49‒102. For the scientific analysis confirming the presence of Cornish tin on the Continent and in Scandinavia, see M. Hausten et al, 'Tin isotopy – a new method for solving old questions', Archaeometry 52.5 (2010), 816–32, on the Bronze Age Nebra sky disk found near Nebra, Germany, and J. Ling et al, 'Moving metals II: provenancing Scandinavian Bronze Age artefacts by lead isotope and elemental analyses', Journal of Archaeological Science, 41 (2014), 106–32, on the pure Cornish tin ring-ingot found at Vårdinge, Sweden, which is dated to c. 950–700 BC. See, for example, Cunliffe, The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek, on Iron Age references to this trade and Sa'id al-Maghribi's medieval account of its continuance into the thirteenth century, cited in note 4 above.7. J. Ling et al, 'Moving metals II: provenancing Scandinavian Bronze Age artefacts by lead isotope and elemental analyses', Journal of Archaeological Science, 41 (2014), 106–32; J. Ling & C. Uhnér, 'Rock art and metal trade', Adoranten, 21 (2014), 23–43; T. Earle et al, 'The political economy and metal trade in Bronze Age Europe: understanding regional variability in terms of comparative advantages and articulations', European Journal of Archaeology, 18.4 (2015), 633–57, esp. pp. 642–4.8. The following list is based primarily on the four papers by Richard Coates and George Broderick cited in note 1, above, supplemented by a number of important papers by Theo Vennemann, cited in the footnotes to the list; note, Vennemann identifies a significant number of potential Punic names in Britain, but these are only listed below if they are discussed and endorsed by Coates and/or Broderick. All names and vocabulary discussed in the papers by Coates and Broderick are listed here, excluding the Isle of Mull, suggested as possibly Punic by Coates but rejected as probably Celtic by Broderick, 'Some island names', p. 13.9. C. R. Green, 'Thanet, Tanit and the Phoenicians: place-names, archaeology and pre-Roman trading settlements in eastern Kent?', 21 April 2015, blog post, online at http://www.caitlingreen.org/2015/04/thanet-tanit-and-the-phoenicians.html; T. Vennemann, 'The name of the Isle of Thanet', in A. J. Johnstone et al (edd.), Language and Text: Current Perspectives on English and Germanic Historical Linguistics and Philology (Heidelberg, 2006), pp. 345–74, especially pp. 345–8, 357–9; R. Coates, 'A glimpse through a dirty window into an unlit house: names of some north-west European islands', in W. Ahrens et al (edd.), Names in Multi-Lingual, Multi-Cultural and Multi-Ethnic Contact: Proceedings of the 23rd International Congress of Onomastic Sciences, August 17-22, 2008 (Toronto, 2009), pp. 228–42 at pp. 234–5; R. Coates, ‘A toponomastic contribution to the linguistic prehistory of the British Isles’, Nomina 35 (2012), 49‒102. Note, the notion that the name Thanet derives from Greek thanatos, 'death', is a learned folk-etymology, see V. Watts, The Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names (Cambridge, 2004), p. 606; R. Coates in R. Coates et al, Celtic Voices, English Places: Studies of the Celtic Impact on Place-Names in England (Stamford, 2000), p. 32; and A. L. F. Rivet & C. Smith, The Place-Names of Roman Britain (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 70, 469.10. See the references cited in note 7, above. For a brief discussion of the burial site on the Isle of Thanet, see C. R. Green, 'Some oxygen isotope evidence for long-distance migration to Britain from North Africa & southern Iberia, c.1100 BC–AD 800', 24 October 2015, blog post, online at http://www.caitlingreen.org/2015/10/oxygen-isotope-evidence.html, and 'A Mediterranean anchor stock of the fifth to mid-second century BC found off the coast of Britain', 29 August 2015, blog post, online at http://www.caitlingreen.org/2015/08/a-mediterranean-anchor.html. Full details of the site and the burials are available in J. I. McKinley et al, 'Dead-sea connections: a Bronze Age and Iron Age ritual site on the Isle of Thanet', in J. T. Koch & B. Cunliffe (eds.), Celtic from the West 2. Rethinking the Bronze Age and the Arrival of Indo-European in Atlantic Europe (Oxford, 2013), pp. 157–83, esp. pp. 166–8, and J. I. McKinley et al, Cliffs End Farm, Isle of Thanet, Kent. A Mortuary and Ritual Site of the Bronze Age, Iron Age and Anglo-Saxon Period with Evidence for Long-Distance Maritime Mobility (Salisbury, 2014).11. O. J. Padel, Dictionary of Cornish Place-Names (Penzance, 1988), p. 147; Coates, 'A glimpse through a dirty window into an unlit house: names of some north-west European islands', p. 237; Coates, ‘A toponomastic contribution to the linguistic prehistory of the British Isles’, pp. 80‒1.12. On the anchor, other finds of such early anchor stocks in Atlantic waters are usually thought to be of Phoenician or Punico-Mauretanian origin: so, a similar Type IIa lead anchor core found at Ras Achakar, Morocco, on the Atlantic side of the Straits of Gibraltar, is thought to have been lost by a Punic ship en route to the important Phoenician settlement of Cádiz, and another Type IIa anchor has been recovered from Cap Spartel, Morocco, that almost certainly dates from the fifth century BC and is similarly though to be from Phoenician/Punico-Mauretanian ship. See further C. R. Green, 'A Mediterranean anchor stock of the fifth to mid-second century BC found off the coast of Britain', 29 August 2015, blog post, online at http://www.caitlingreen.org/2015/08/a-mediterranean-anchor.html. On the Moroccan examples of Type IIa Mediterranean anchors, see A. Trakadas & E. Erbati, 'Lead anchor elements from Tangier, Morocco', Bulletin D'Archeologie Marocaine, 21 (2009), 250–67 at pp. 253–4, 256; A. Trakadas, 'Morocco Maritime Survey: the 2002 season', The INA Quarterly, 30 (2003), 12–21, esp. pp. 18–20 on a radiocarbon-dated Type IIa anchor. See also A. Trakadas & S. Claesson, 'On the shores of the Maghreb-al-Asqa: the 1999 survey of Tangier Bay, Morocco', The INA Quarterly, 28 (2001), 3–15; A. Trakadas, 'Morocco Maritime Survey: 2003 season', The INA Quarterly, 31 (2004), 3–9, especially pp. 8–9; and E. Erbati & A. Trakadas, The Morocco Maritime Survey (Oxford, 2008), for example p. 63. A fifth-century date for the Cap Spartel anchor core is based on a combination of the general chronology of Type IIa anchors, that is fifth to mid-second century BC, and the fact that the core still had some of its original wooden stock attached which has been radiocarbon dated to 785–400 cal BC. On Mount Batten and Plymouth Sound/the Tamar Estuary, see E. Wilkes, Iron Age Maritime Nodes on the English Channel Coast: An Investigation into the Location, Nature and Context of Early Ports and Harbours, 2 vols. (Bournemouth University PhD Thesis, 2004), I.139–42, II.466–7; A. Firth et al, Tamar Estuaries Historic Environment: A Review of Marine and Coastal Archaeology (Plymouth, 1998); B. Cunliffe, Mount Batten, Plymouth: a Prehistoric and Roman Port (Oxford, 1988).13. Coates, 'A glimpse through a dirty window into an unlit house: names of some north-west European islands', p. 235, and Coates, ‘A toponomastic contribution to the linguistic prehistory of the British Isles’.14. Broderick, 'Some island names in the former "Kingdom of the Isles": a reappraisal', p. 11; Coates, 'A glimpse through a dirty window into an unlit house: names of some north-west European islands', p. 237; Coates, ‘A toponomastic contribution to the linguistic prehistory of the British Isles’, pp. 80‒1.15. T. Vennemann, ‘Remarks on some British place-names’, in G. F. Carr et al (edd.), Interdigitations: Essays for Irmengard Rauch (New York, 1999), pp. 25‒62 at pp. 40‒2; Coates, ‘A toponomastic contribution to the linguistic prehistory of the British Isles’; Coates, 'A glimpse through a dirty window into an unlit house: names of some north-west European islands', p. 234. On the identification of the Atlantic Kassiterides with the Scilly Isles, see especially D. W. Roller, Through the Pillars of Herakles: Greco-Roman Exploration of the Atlantic (London, 2006), pp. 12–14.16. R. Coates, ‘Periplus: a voyage round The Solent’, in R. Coates, Toponymic Topics: Essays on the Early Toponomy of the British Isles (Brighton, 1988), pp. 1‒20; Vennemann, ‘Remarks on some British place-names’, pp. 38‒40; G. Broderick, ‘The names of Britain and Ireland revisited’, Beiträge zur Namenforschung, 44 (2009), 151‒7.17. G. Broderick, 'Some island names in the former "Kingdom of the Isles": a reappraisal', Journal of Scottish Name Studies, 7 (2013), 1–28 at pp. 8‒9; R. Coates, ‘Uist ‒ Ibiza’, in R. Coates, Toponymic Topics: Essays on the Early Toponomy of the British Isles (Brighton, 1988), pp. 21‒3; Coates, ‘A toponomastic contribution to the linguistic prehistory of the British Isles’, pp. 63‒5.18. Broderick, 'Some island names in the former "Kingdom of the Isles": a reappraisal', pp. 13‒15; Coates, ‘A toponomastic contribution to the linguistic prehistory of the British Isles’, p. 66; Coates, 'A glimpse through a dirty window into an unlit house: names of some north-west European islands', p. 234.19. Coates, 'A glimpse through a dirty window into an unlit house: names of some north-west European islands', pp. 233‒4; Coates, ‘A toponomastic contribution to the linguistic prehistory of the British Isles’; Broderick, 'Some island names in the former "Kingdom of the Isles": a reappraisal', pp. 15‒16.20. See especially Broderick, 2013, pp. 4‒5; also Coates, 2009, p. 234; Coates, 2012, pp. 70‒1; and Vennemann, ‘Remarks on some British place-names’, p. 46.21. Coates, ‘A toponomastic contribution to the linguistic prehistory of the British Isles’, pp. 80‒1.22. Coates, ‘A toponomastic contribution to the linguistic prehistory of the British Isles’, p. 81, although see Broderick, 'Some island names in the former "Kingdom of the Isles": a reappraisal', pp. 19‒20.23. Coates, ‘A toponomastic contribution to the linguistic prehistory of the British Isles’; Coates, 'A glimpse through a dirty window into an unlit house: names of some north-west European islands', p. 233.24. See especially G. Broderick, ‘The names of Britain and Ireland revisited’, Beiträge zur Namenforschung, 44 (2009), 151‒7, who gives a thorough survey of the ancient textual evidence for the tin trade too; also Coates, ‘A toponomastic contribution to the linguistic prehistory of the British Isles’, and T. Vennemann, ‘Zur Etymologie von Éire, dem Namen Irlands’, Sprachwissenschaft, 23.4 (1998), 461‒9. See further the following on Phoenician traders/colonists and the early trade in British tin: D. W. Roller, Through the Pillars of Herakles: Greco-Roman Exploration of the Atlantic (London, 2006), pp. 12–14, 27–9; D. W. Roller, 'Himilco the Navigator', in E. K. Akyeampong & H. L. Gates Jnr. (edd.), Dictionary of African Biography, 6 vols. (Oxford, 2012), III.70; Vennemann, 'Name of the Isle of Thanet', p. 356 and fn. 40; J. Ling et al, 'Moving metals II: provenancing Scandinavian Bronze Age artefacts by lead isotope and elemental analyses', Journal of Archaeological Science, 41 (2014), 106–32; J. Ling & C. Uhnér, 'Rock art and metal trade', Adoranten, 21 (2014), 23–43; and T. Earle et al, 'The political economy and metal trade in Bronze Age Europe: understanding regional variability in terms of comparative advantages and articulations', European Journal of Archaeology, 18.4 (2015), 633–57, esp. pp. 642–4.25. See further the discussion in Coates, ‘A toponomastic contribution to the linguistic prehistory of the British Isles’.

About This Website

This is the blog of Dr Caitlin Green. Although my main academic research foci and publications are dealt with elsewhere, this blog will feature posts on these and other topics that I'm currently working on, including drafts of papers, ideas and similar—these are usually identifiable by the presence of footnotes. You're free to cite these drafts if they are of interest, and are reminded that academic blogs are indeed citable under most citation systems. In addition, the current site also houses posts relating to my personal interests, including landscape and coastal history, long-distance contacts, early literature and legends, and the history, archaeology, place-names and legends of Lincolnshire. For further details of this website & how to contact me, please see the 'About' page or @caitlinrgreen on Twitter.